


Mourning

by AmyBenson



Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: Angst, Closure, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-10 20:09:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13508889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmyBenson/pseuds/AmyBenson
Summary: Two weeks after the funeral Alfred received a note from Florence Villiers.





	Mourning

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't exactly a fix-it, but an attempt at giving Alfred some sort of closure.  
> It doesn't take into account the Christmas special, but doesn't directly contradict it either.
> 
> It's the first time I've written fic in English, and I can't thank @animateglee enough for being my beta :)

Two weeks after the funeral Alfred received a note from Florence Villiers. She rather formally asked him to meet her at her parents’ house. The reasons behind this invitation remained undisclosed, and Alfred would have feared the worst – exposure – if the thing worse than the worst hadn’t happened to him already.

Alfred could carry himself in court better than most. He’d never let his feelings overwhelm him. Even when he knew he was in love, he stayed in control, only allowing himself a sliver of something pure and true here and there.

Now pain and regret were all he was.

Alfred almost wore black, as he did these days as much as he could without raising suspicion, but at the last moment decided against it. Uniform seemed more appropriate. Besides, it helped him keep his back straight when all he wanted was to crawl on the floor and scream.

Florence greeted him at the door and sent away the servants ready to offer him tea or something stronger.  
It was quiet in her family house.

He remembered them being introduced at the funeral, but had no recollection of her face. Did he even look up at her? He could only remember the ugly sound of her weeping, and his own voice breaking, but most of that day was in haze.  
Now she looked sad, still in her mourning gown, but also collected and somehow intense. There was something odd about her expression, something that he couldn’t quite place.

She wasn’t pretty at all.

He must have been staring at her, because she looked down at her modest black dress and said:

‘I’ve read that in India, when a husband dies, they bury his wife with him. I wonder how that feels.’

Alfred twitched, suddenly uncomfortable in his red coat.

He followed her to her study. Despite feeling lived in, it was simple, almost Spartan, except for white flowers on the table.

She examined him, head to toe, with such shamelessness and borderline morbid curiosity, that it made him uncomfortable.  
Then she turned to the window and spoke without looking at him:

‘Did you know that Edward never started a serious conversation without having drafted it in advance? Politicians,’ she said with a soft smirk. ‘When he proposed, he had an outline of his speech in his pocket. Mind you, he didn’t get a word wrong anyway,’ she said with an echo of a smile in her voice.

Alfred was looking at her narrow back, some part of him wondering if he should be scared, but he couldn’t find any fear in his entire being. He realized to his own surprise, that exposure didn’t terrify him. Quite possibly, nothing did anymore. Whatever shame, loss and punishment were waiting for him at the end of this rendezvous, all of it – even his own death – was now a mere inconvenience.

When Florence turned back to him, her eyes were red, yet there were no tears.

‘They sent me his private papers. His poor mother didn’t want any of them. At first I thought it’d be impolite to read them. Were it a personal diary, I wouldn’t have touched it. But it would have been even more unfair to Edward to burn them without reading.’

She stayed silent for a few moments, as if waiting for him to speak out of politeness or indignation, but he was too tired for either. Then she just said it:

‘He was going to break off the engagement.’

She paused again, waiting for his reaction, but Alfred’s expression remained blank, so she continued:

‘I liked the proposal speech better but maybe the one about breaking it off wasn’t finished yet.’

He couldn’t quite tell, if it was bitterness behind her coldness, or rage, or grief, or something else entirely.

She opened a bureau and took out a plain brown folder.

‘I think, these are meant for you.’

His hand stopped inches away from the folder.

‘Have you read them?’ he asked.  
‘I’ve read enough.’  
‘Lady Florence…’  
‘Spare me the details. I knew Edward never loved me, I had my suspicions, but this... For days I’ve been thinking, how shall I go on so as not to betray his memory?’ She looked away for a second and at last Alfred saw tears in her eyes.

In one small step she closed the remaining inches and almost forced the folder into his hands.

‘Now it’s your burden, not mine. I’ll mourn a loss of a dear friend, but I won’t bury myself with Edward. I’ll live on, and one day I’ll be… content.’

Using Drummond’s first name so casually was probably what she was used to, but Alfred could only think of it as her exercising her last bit of power over him.

Florence was breathing heavily now, fighting away the tears of grief, and rage, and triumph, and relief. Alfred couldn’t help but look at the folder in his hand, simple brown paper, a bit rough, warm from his touch, or hers.

‘Do you believe in God?’ he heard himself saying.  
‘Why?’  
Alfred looked up and met her gaze, which had turned curious again. He felt his own face grimacing as if in pain.  
‘Do you think he is in hell?’

The question had been on his mind from the moment he’d first heard of Drummond’s death. He’d never been particularly religious, and used to laugh off the idea of all the pleasant things being sinful, but he no longer had that luxury. Above all his pain, there was a possibility that Drummond was in hell.

‘I don’t know,’ Lady Florence shrugged helplessly. ‘He saved the Prime Minister. It should count for something.’  
‘It should,’ a sad smile touched the corners of his mouth. He bowed in farewell, and she nodded in return. He’d spent months trying not to hate her and was beginning to wonder if she felt the same way about him.

Alfred returned to the palace feeling faint, as if he’d breathed in with his first step and hadn’t breathed out until he was back in his chambers. His mind was blank and his heart was beating so fast it might as well have stopped.  
He opened the folder and saw a page covered in Drummond’s writing, all long strokes and sharp angles, and his hands started shaking.

On top of it, there was his card with the address of Ciros written on the back by his own hand.

From what he could tell, the page in front of him wasn’t a letter or a speech yet, but indeed a draft. He stroked a few chaotic lines in the top right corner with his thumb, before realizing that they made up a rather awkwardly sketched profile. It felt so intimate, that Alfred hesitated for a moment. But he wasn’t going to resist this last temptation. He wouldn’t give up his last chance for a closure – his last chance for anything that was left of their relationship – no matter how selfish it was of him.

He recognized the first sentence immediately:  
_I’ve decided to break off the engagement._  
The rest of the page was covered with key words and unfinished sentences, some crossed out, some underlined, some underlined and then crossed out, and such, but this first statement looked disarmingly decisive.

There was _Scotland_ , and _it’s only right_ , and _unfair_ , and something illegible about Florence, and _I don’t know_ – _ruin_ – _I’m not sure what to_ – _how to proceed_ – _what to do_ – _future_ – _the only thing I’m sure about_ , and – he wasn’t sure if he was reading it right – _hotel?_ , and a list of dates, edited and reedited.  
Now Alfred saw with certain clarity how their conversation at Ciros had been supposed to go. If only he hadn’t been so prudent about his precious status quo.

Then there was a letter.

The envelope was unstamped and unaddressed, but the letter inside was a clean copy and properly folded. It looked nice and neat and would have seemed formal if not for the content.

 _Dear_ – it said, and after that – a blank space in place of a name, Alfred’s name, without a doubt, as if Drummond left it unsealed – left his name out of _hard_evidence_ till the last possible moment, or maybe for good.

 _I know I shouldn’t be writing this letter. But, just this once, to hell with caution. To hell with pride. To hell with dignity._  
_I want to know, if you still stand by what you said at Ciros. I can’t help but think that the decisions we made that night were made in haste._  
_Never in my life have I been so happy as I was in Scotland. I can’t ask you to sacrifice your prospects, your position, your future, but I want you to know, that I’d give anything to experience such joy again.  
_ _If you genuinely don’t want me_

Alfred felt so faint that for a moment he thought he wouldn’t be able to finish the letter. He should have known by now that Drummond had always been too brave for him. He could never match him, but now he had to try.

 _If you genuinely don’t want me, burn this letter at once, and I shall never mention it again._  
_But if you do, let us meet tonight for champagne and oysters, same time, same place.  
__It’s up to you whether we remain acquaintances and hopefully even friends, or together start looking for new words that would suit us better._

_Yours, Edward_

‘Edward,’ he repeated softly and heard tears in his voice before he felt them on his cheeks.

He finally gave in and sank into a chair.

‘Edward,’ the name was all he had left now, but it was more than he’d hoped for at the start of the day.

He repeated the name again and again, until the word was stripped of any meaning other than its taste on his tongue and desperate longing in his heart.

 

Alfred never dared to inquire if his last note had reached Edward. Even if it’d have brought him peace, to be at peace meant to start forgetting, but now to remember was his burden, his duty and his honour. To mourn was to love.


End file.
